Liberating your Data with the (free) Website Performance Dashboard
It's time to liberate your data.
Introducing the (free) Website Performance Dashboard on Google Data Studio
Built for time-poor entrepreneurs & marketers who want insights fast.
UPDATE (14/2/18): We've updated the User Interface of the dashboard for to make it a whole lot sexier. Check out my updated Google Data Studio template.
(No paywall, email sign up, or refer a friend required)
JUMP TO:
1. Setting Up Your Dashboard
2. What's Each Page For?
3. Using Filters
4. What's next?
A one-stop shop for your sites most important metrics.
All marketers & businesses desire to be data-driven, but many find Google Analytics so daunting that their precious data ends up locked away, unloved.
The Website Performance Dashboard is here to liberate your Google Analytics data - letting it breathe on a clean & easy to understand 7-page dashboard.
At Aro Digital, it's critical to know what's going on at a top level with all of our clients - we find dashboards just like these incredibly valuable.
It's time to turn your Google Analytics data into insights driving marketing and content decisions.
1. Setting Up Your Dashboard
A. Prerequisites - Before you start:
Ensure you have at Edit or Admin Access to your Google Analytics account.
If you want the full power of the reporting you'll also need:
- A Search Console account connected to the same Google account (for the Keyword Rankings Page)
- Demographic Data turned on in your Google Analytics account (for the Demographic Data page)
- To connect your Adwords account to Google Analytics (for the Adwords page)
Okay, got all that? Let's do this! (It's super easy)
B. Make a Copy & Add Google Analytics
Now you've got all of these sorted, it's time to connect your Analytics account to the dashboard.
Make a copy of the Template
Hit the dropdown menu for the first box, click 'Create New Data Source'
Give Data Studios access to your data (not shown in video below)
Go to the Google Analytics row
Pick your GA account & view
Hit connect (top right)
Wait a couple of seconds for 'Using Owners Credentials' to Disappear
Then click add to report (top right)
C. Add Search Console Data
It's the exact same process for adding Search Console - however, you'll adding 'Site Impression' not 'URL Impression'
2. What's Each Page For?
Each page exists to give you insights into an individual metric set.
Here's a breakdown of the pages and questions they can help answer.
Site Visits - Top level understanding of the number of visits, devices and user types.
Demographic Data - Where are users arriving from? What's the age and gender breakdown?
Traffic Sources - What channel is most traffic coming from?
Popular Pages - What content are users highly engaged with?
Adwords Performance - How much have we spent? What devices are people clicking from?
Organic Visits - Are our organic visits increasing? What city are they coming from?
Keyword Rankings - What's our CTR in Google? What's our average position for each keyword?
3. Using Filters
I've added a date, device category and city filter along the top of the report.
Clicking these allows you to change the data of the report, allowing for a more in-depth analysis of your data.
Pro tip: For the Device or City filters, click the "only" button to save de-selecting every option.
Here's a couple of examples of how the filters can answer some previously difficult-to-answer questions:
What's the age breakdown of visitors from Auckland?
Go to the Demographics page and set the City filter to only Auckland.
Where are we receiving most of our Mobile traffic from?
Use the Traffic Sources page and set the Device filter to only Mobile.
What pages are being the viewed the most on Desktop?
Go to the Popular Pages page and set the Device filter to Desktop.
4. What's Next?
I'm going to be continuously improving this, so if you have a suggestion for something you'd like to see on the report - let me know via email!